Lecture, Language and the Human Past

Lecture, Sign Languages & Deaf People

Laura Llorente-Rodriguez is an Assistant Professor in Archaeozoology and head of the Laboratory for Archaeozoological Studies.

Lecture, Comparative Indo-European Linguistics (CIEL) Seminars

Olga Lundysheva is a PhD student under the supervision of Prof.dr. Michaël Peyrot and Prof.dr. Sasha Lubotsky. She investigates Tocharian B manuscripts with a special focus on palaeography and codicology.

The Leiden municipality wants to make the city centre climate-proof and combat heat stress by greening it. But they want to do this in a way that does justice to the city’s heritage. Researcher Fenna IJtsma delves into historical greenery to offer inspiration.

On 24 and 25 April 2025, the Trippenhuis in Amsterdam — home to the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (KNAW) — hosted an interdisciplinary workshop organized by dr. Rafal Matuszewski, an ancient historian at the Institute for History in Leiden.

The question of land property titles is a common source of conflict between indigenous communities and federal authorities all over the Americas. A new Panamanian law have led indigenous communities to reach out to archaeologist Dr Natalia Donner. A grant from the Centre for Indigenous American Studies…

Theft, prostitution, fortune-telling or murder. Historian Manon van der Heijden and a group of students are researching court records from The Hague from 1600 to 1800. They are tracing crimes and offenders and shedding new light on The Hague’s Gevangenpoort (or Prison Gate). Among their many discoveries…

Research into our history of colonialism and slavery, heart-to-heart conversations at a Keti Koti table, exhibitions, lectures and podcasts that establish the link between present and past. Staff and students participated in the national Slavery Memorial Year in many different ways. What have we learned…

Dutch people are far more law-abiding than they might like to think. And they are very different from the Belgians in that regard. The different approaches of the two governments towards the coronavirus crisis, for example, can be explained from the history of both countries since the Middle Ages. Historians…

Why did fewer women suffer from osteoporosis in the past than today? And which aspects of a city make public spaces safe, accessible and comfortable for all residents? These two research questions will be explored in more detail thanks to an Impulse Grant from the Leiden University Fund.

Roos van Oosten is an assistant professor in Medieval and Urban Archaeology at Leiden University. She has a broad research interest reflected in numerous publications on diverse topics: sanitation management, the textile industry, cemeteries and burial practices, historical cooking, ceramics and environmental…

What do you do when you’re suddenly given access to a whole lot of data but don’t know how to organise and analyse it? Maritime historians in the Faculty of Humanities joined forces with vocational college (MBO) students to build a database. ‘We’re so compatible with each other.’

Pascale Eskes is a PhD Candidate at the Centre for Linguistics

Sasha Lubotsky is an Emeritus Professor of Comparative Indo-European Linguistics at the Leiden University Centre for Linguistics.

Ton Koopman is a Professor emeritus of Historically Informed Performance of Early Music at the Academy of Creative and Performing Arts.

The largest international conference on English historical linguistics is coming to Leiden. From 7 June to 11 June 2021, the Leiden University Centre for Linguistics (LUCL) organises the International Conference on English Historical Linguistics (ICEHL-21). Due to Covid measures, the conference takes…

Learn how the daily Attari-Wagah border ceremony continues despite political tensions between India and Pakistan. Anthropologist Radhika Gupta offers insights into the complex historical and cultural relationship between these two nations in this recent NOS article.

The underwater world around present-day Indonesia has changed greatly in recent centuries as a result of human activity. University lecturer Johannes Müller has been awarded an NWO XS grant to map the history of the Indonesian ecosystems.

What did plays look like in the seventeenth, eighteenth or nineteenth centuries? With the new OverActing theatre festival, university lecturer Jed Wentz is trying to get closer to an answer to that question.

The democratic rule of law is under pressure due to a series of scandals and integrity issues, as seen in the recent parliamentary inquiries. Professor Ronald Kroeze explains: 'Public office holders are expected to show complete dedication, but that norm is quite absolute, and what we mean by it is…

Isabelle Duyvesteyn, Professor of International Studies and Global History at the Institute of History and member of the advisory board of Leiden University’s Centre for International Relations (LUCIR) is widely regarded as an expert on civil wars and conflicts. Her new book, Rebels and Conflict Escalation,…

As an ethnobotanist, I study traditional plant use. Together with several PhD students, postdoc fellows and MSc students, I am involved in a number of research projects.

Friday 4 November marked the 65th anniversary of the founding of Leiden’s P.C. Hooft Historical Debating Society. Although new members have not been accepted for several decades, the society is still alive and kicking. A retrospective with former presidents Jos Hooghuis and Saskia Leupen.

How do games help shape our perception of the past? Associate Professor Angus Mol receives a Vidi grant to answer this question.

Hans Mol is Professor Emeritus by Special Appointment of Medieval Frisian History on behalf of the Fryske Akademy at the Leiden University Institute for History.

Niels Schoubben is a postdoctoral researcher in the ERC project “The Silk Road Language Web” (PI: Prof. dr. Michaël Peyrot). As a linguist-cum-philologist, he studies the written remains of extinct Central Asian languages in order to uncover words and grammatical patterns borrowed from one ancient language…

Tijmen Pronk is Assistant Professor and Director of Education at the Leiden University Centre for Linguistics.

When are you (sexually) mature? A KNAW grant will enable associate professor Rafal Matuszewski to organise an interdisciplinary workshop on this question.

Guus Kroonen is a teacher and researcher in the fields of Scandinavian, Germanic and Indo-European comparative linguistics. Etymology, reconstruction and phylogenetics as well as the study of prehistoric language contact and language dispersals are among his professional focuses. He has led multiple…

Ingrid Tieken-Boon van Ostade is a Professor emeritus of English Sociohistorical Linguistics at the Leiden University Centre for Linguistics.

Hilde Gunnink is a linguist specialized in the languages of Southern Africa. Her research focuses on documenting the synchronic structures of African languages, how these developed and changed over time, and what this can tell us about the human past.

Alwin Kloekhorst is professor of Anatolian Linguistics within the Comparative Indo-European Linguistics section at LUCL. His research focuses of the Indo-European language of Ancient Anatolia (Hittite, Luwian, Lydian, Lycian, Carian, etc.) and the genealogical position of this Anatolian branch within…

Conference

Jiang Wu is a postdoctoral researcher at the Centre for Linguistics. He is currently involved in the NWO-funded project

Michaël Peyrot’s research focuses on the reconstruction of Proto-Indo-European, in particular the verbal system, and on language contact and prehistory, especially in the Tocharian, Iranian and Indic branches. The leading question is how language contact can be used to draw conclusions about linguistic…

Conference, Workshop